№1 2021 — 07
DOI: 10.22281/2413-9912-2021-05-01-74-89
Kulakov V.I.
TYPOLOGY AND CHRONOLOGY OF AESTIAN AND PRUSSIAN FUNERAL URNS
The coexistence of several types of urns in the funerary antiquities of the Aestians and Prussians testifies to the fact that in the imagination of community members (obviously, mainly women), there were prototypes of urns that were of ethno-cultural significance for (forced) ceramists. The aforementioned inhabitants of the Amber Coast at the beginning of our era were called Aestii by the Germans (ancient German — «living in the east»). The low quality of urn ceramics and their weak firing characterize the insignificant professional training of members of the tribal collective, who are forced to mold vessels only when necessary to prepare the urn for the funeral of a relative. The large sizes of the main part of the types of urns in our array are obviously the result of some cult norms. Ashes from the fire and cremated remains of the deceased, together with his inventory, occupy a small part of the urn’s volume and were not necessarily at its bottom. Existing in the traditions of the population of the Amber Coast for half a millennium, the urn, as it turned out, can contain information of a chronological and ethno-cultural nature, and not just be recorded by archaeologists as a repository of the ashes of the buried.
Keywords: Baltic, Aestians, Prussians, burials, urns, typology.
Russian Academy of Sciences (Russia)
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